You get hired first and learn on the job — BLS says most animal care and service workers learn through on-the-job training, so there's typically no program to finish before you apply.
What actually decides it: the working-age rules, showing you're reliable around animals, and applying where kennel jobs really are.
Here's what to expect from requirements, applications, training, and the rung above.
What are the kennel attendant requirements?
The bar to entry is mostly about who can legally be hired, not what you already know.
Federal child-labor rules under the FLSA set 16 as the basic minimum age for non-agricultural employment, and 16- and 17-year-olds may work unlimited hours in any occupation not declared hazardous by the Secretary of Labor.
Fourteen- and 15-year-olds have a narrower lane: under the FLSA they may be employed outside school hours, in non-manufacturing and non-hazardous jobs, for limited periods and under specified conditions.
Once a worker turns 18, the federal youth employment provisions stop applying entirely.
States add rules of their own.
Federal youth provisions don't require work permits or cap hours for workers 16 and older, but the Department of Labor notes many states do — and where federal and state law both apply, the stricter standard must be obeyed.
Check your own state's rules before planning school-hour schedules.
Past age, the application comes down to what a hiring manager can actually judge: reliability (showing up, on time, every shift), comfort around unfamiliar animals, and willingness to do the unglamorous core of the work.
BLS describes the job as caring for pets, often overnight, in place of owners — cleaning cages and dog runs, feeding, exercising and playing with animals.
Experienced attendants may take on basic healthcare, bathing and basic grooming.
The age floors here are federal — states can be stricter
Skills that help you get hired
The skill the whole job rests on is calm handling of animals that aren't yours — moving slowly, reading body language, and following the facility's handling rules before improvising.
The cleaning and feeding routines are the part you learn on the job; calm judgment around a scared animal is the one to demonstrate in the interview and lean on in your application.
Schedule flexibility is the second one.
Part-time work is common for animal caretakers, and facilities that operate 24 hours a day — kennels and shelters among them — may need care around the clock, including evenings, weekends and holidays.
If you can cover a Sunday-morning feeding block or a holiday shift, say so in your application; it's the simplest way to be useful to a schedule that runs around the clock.
A few things that strengthen an application without being requirements:
- Any history around animals that aren't yours — shelter volunteering, pet sitting, barn work, 4-H — described in terms of what you actually did, not how much you loved it.
- Handling awareness. Fear Free offers a membership with certification programs it designs for everyone employed at a practice, from veterinarians and technicians to customer service representatives and practice managers. If clinics near you use Fear Free handling, familiarity with the approach is a legitimate thing to mention — ask whether they recognize it.
- Honest availability. A facility that needs care around the clock will need weekend and holiday coverage — say plainly what you can and can't work.
Where to apply: where kennel attendant jobs actually are
Kennel work is a big occupation with a small clinic slice.
Animal caretakers held about 365,300 jobs in 2025, with the largest shares in other personal services (40%) — boarding, grooming, daycare — and self-employment (25%); only 10% were in professional, scientific and technical services, the sector that includes veterinary clinics.
About 33,720 animal caretakers were employed in veterinary services in the same May 2025 data.
So most animal caretakers work outside veterinary clinics, with the largest single share in personal services like boarding, grooming and daycare.
If the clinic is the goal, target kennel and ward openings at veterinary hospitals directly: open kennel attendant jobs on VeterinaryHires are one place to start.
The full settings breakdown is in the kennel attendant career guide.
Openings also concentrate with a few employers.
On October 22, 2026, VeterinaryHires listed 318 open kennel attendant jobs from 117 employers in 42 states, and the five largest employers posted 58.2% of them, led by Destination Pet with 97.
If no clinic near you is hiring, the biggest posters are where the volume is.
Read the schedule before applying: at least 52.2% of those listings were part-time, and listings that named no schedule were counted as full-time, so the true share may be higher.
A pet care discount was named in 70.4% of those listings — more often than health insurance (50.6%) or dental/vision (49.7%) — while 33.6% named PTO.
Pay, with the sources kept separate: BLS's OEWS May 2025 data puts the animal caretaker median at $35,360 a year ($17.00 an hour) across all industries, and $32,150 ($15.46 an hour) for the caretakers working in veterinary services — the clinic-side jobs pay below the occupation-wide median.
The listing data is a third thing again: VeterinaryHires employers advertised a median of $15.00 an hour (75 employers, 83 listings stating hourly pay — a small sample), and an earlier October 6, 2026 snapshot had an employer median of $15.00 an hour across 65 employers.
Advertised pay on a dated snapshot is not the same thing as earnings.
Three pay series, three meanings
What to expect in training
Most animal care and service workers learn through on-the-job training, and kennel work is the clearest version of that: your first shifts are spent learning the facility's routines — which animal gets which diet, which run can't host a newcomer, the order that keeps cleaning sane, which animals are on medication and when.
The proof you've learned it isn't a certificate — it's that the animals are safe, the logs are filled in clearly enough for a veterinarian or technician to act on, and the next shift isn't cleaning up after yours.
By the first month, good looks like animals fed and walked on schedule, kennels clean and dry, and every handling scare flagged to a supervisor rather than hidden.
As you're trusted further, the tasks BLS flags for experienced attendants — basic healthcare, bathing and basic grooming — may start coming your way.
Expect the schedule to include the blocks nobody wants.
Facilities operating 24 hours a day may need care around the clock — evenings, weekends and holidays included.
Taking those shifts willingly builds standing — and it's the fastest way to see the whole operation.
Ask to be taught handling first
Next step: from kennel attendant to veterinary assistant
The rung above is veterinary assistant, and the honest framing is the one the kennel to assistant guide is built on: the move is a job change, not a promotion you wait for.
That page lays out the month-by-month plan for making it — what carries over from kennel work, what to build, and when optional training pays.
Don't wait on a promotion clock — our research found no NAVTA or industry figure for how long kennel attendants typically stay in the role before moving up.
If you're ready, the move is made by applying for an assistant opening; what you can bring to it is safe handling demonstrated on the job and a reference from inside the building.
If your long game is vet school, the classification question matters now.
VMCAS defines Animal Experience as animal work not under the supervision of a veterinarian — its examples are farm and ranch work, 4-H and animal training — so boarding-kennel hours generally land in that bucket.
Experience that took place under a veterinarian's supervision — veterinary clinical, agribusiness or health-science work, the bucket paid veterinary-assistant work falls into — is what VMCAS calls Veterinary Experience.
So if you're choosing between a boarding job and a clinic-side one, ask whether a veterinarian would actually supervise your work — that's the line the two definitions turn on.
Reading this from the other side of the desk?
The employer-side guide to hiring a kennel attendant covers what practices screen for — useful whether you're the applicant or the one deciding.